reify

The brain latches on or compares itself to others, starting a negative cycle of thinking that can reify itself.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 1, 2024

They ask critical questions about colleges as sites that perpetuate classism, places that not only reify hierarchies of value but rely on it as part of their mythology.

From Salon ● Jul. 31, 2021

We can use the mythology of the frontier, he writes, “to reify our nostalgia for a falsely idealized past,” or we can use it as a way of “imagining and speaking truth.”

From New York Times ● Dec. 21, 2017

And that, in turn, their worth was meaningless without a man or a corporation to reify it.

From The Guardian ● Feb. 22, 2016

Markets reify this contribution, turning life, energy, doubts, time, or whatever else-in particular language-into the commodity embodied in the product.

From The Civilization of Illiteracy by Mihai Nadin

We play by a code of conduct, that nebulous thing we have reified as “international law.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 8, 2025

Each count, Mr Teltumbde argues, "did not merely record caste, but reified and hardened it".

From BBC ● Nov. 12, 2025

Pitsilionis was born in Greece; he credits his commitment to hospitality in part to his homeland’s culture, reified working in his family’s restaurant after they moved to Kenai, Alaska.

From Seattle Times ● Jun. 4, 2023

The TV Bourdain of “A Cook’s Tour,” still a young man, reinforced the persona of the bad boy, willing to eat anything anywhere, and reified the idea of the macho knife-loving male chef.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 9, 2018

In the first place, language itself is reified and consumed.

From The Civilization of Illiteracy by Mihai Nadin

Based off the conventions and what exists in the world in terms of cyborgian narratives, I wanted to contribute something that isn’t reifying those projects.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 29, 2022

It’s tough to know how purposeful these indictments about privilege are — they generally serve the narratives of the shows while reifying their stars, who are presented as being open to personal growth.

From New York Times ● Dec. 23, 2021

Rather than reifying 1776 or 1787, “reflective patriotism” addresses questions about who was denied full rights in the polity.

From Slate ● Jun. 23, 2021

But if the Warhol Foundation were to rescue Interview, that would bring in new advertisers from the art world while reifying its status as a unique art object in its own right.

From Slate ● May 22, 2018

But this latter view is precisely the error of extreme realism, of reifying abstract concepts and holding the “universale a parte rei”: a theory which leads logically to monism.143 31.

From Ontology or the Theory of Being by Peter Coffey